Planet Mercury Burns At 430 Degree Celsius, But Scientists Have Found It Has Ice

It is common knowledge that Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun in the solar system. A vague deduction that can be made from this is the fact that it has scorching high temperatures most of the time. Which it does, as the daytime temperature on the planet can reach up to 430¡ãCelsius. What is not known to many though, is that the planet still has ice!

The ice packs are not on the surface of the planet. Instead, these were found in specific regions at the poles of Mercury that never receive sunlight. Called 'permanently shadowed regions' or PSRs, these cratered recesses are in an everlasting darkness.

One explanation for this is the ice usually brought to a planet by asteroids, comets and meteorites that crash on its surface. If the ice reaches the deep craters below the surface, it is likely to never receive sunlight and hence, never melt.

Mercury (Image: Reuters)

However, the reason for ice on Mercury might be entirely different. A new study proposes that the ice found on Mercury, or at least some of it, is produced by the extreme heat received by Mercury from the Sun as it crosses it.

A team from the Georgia Institute of Technology explains that the phenomenon is not unheard of before. In fact, as per chemist Brant Jones, Georgia Tech's REVEAL lab¡¯s co-investigator, "the basic chemical mechanism has been observed dozens of times in studies since the late 1960s."

The new research paper sheds some light on it. As per the study, the formation of ice on Mercury due to the Sun¡¯s heat is a part of a continuous water formation process on the planet. The process relies on minerals present in the planet's surface soil and is what is called recombinative desorption (RD).

The process explains how the metal oxides present in the soil minerals are bombarded with charged proton particles that come along with the solar wind. This results in the formation of bound hydroxyls, molecular hydrogen, and water.

Mercury's Surface (Image: Reuters)

Since Mercury has an atmosphere-less environment and extreme heat, H20 molecules separated from the surface soil diffuse and drift across the planet¡¯s environment. As and when these water molecules reach any PSRs, they tend to freeze there, perpetually remaining in the frozen state.

"Water formed from this mechanism will inevitably amass in the cold PSRs and will contribute significant amounts to the surface of Mercury over geological time periods," the paper explains.

The research, reported on the ¡®Astrophysical Journal Letters¡¯ suggests that the phenomenon can easily account for 10 percent of Mercury¡¯s total ice. Even then, the whole process of the Sun¡¯s scorching heat resulting in an ice formation sounds super cool, right? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.

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